Just about every car, train, and plane that’s been built since 1970 has been manufactured using high-power lasers that shoot a continuous beam of light. These lasers are strong enough to cut steel, precise enough to perform surgery, and powerful enough to carry messages into deep space. They are so powerful, in fact, that it’s difficult to engineer resilient and long-lasting components that can control the powerful beams the lasers emit.

Today, most mirrors used to direct the beam in high-power continuous wave (CW) lasers are made by layering thin coatings of materials with different optical properties. But if there is even one, tiny defect in any of the layers, the powerful laser beam will burn through, causing the whole device to fail. [1]

Figure 1. Diamond mirrors for high-powered lasers

Figure 1 shows now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have built a mirror from one of the strongest materials on the planet: diamond. By etching nanostructures on the surface of a thin diamond disk, the research team built a highly reflective mirror that passed, without damage, experiments with a 10-kilowatt Navy laser. [2]

Loncar's Laboratory for Nanoscale Optics originally developed the technique to etch nanoscale structures into diamonds for applications in quantum optics and communications. 

Using this technique, which uses an ion beam to etch the diamond, the researchers sculpted an array of golf-tee shaped columns on the surface on a 3-milimeter by 3-milimeter diamond sheet. The shape of the golf tees, wide on top and skinny on the bottom, makes the surface of the diamond 98.9% reflective. [3]

Using this technique, which uses an ion beam to etch the diamond, the researchers sculpted an array of golf-tee shaped columns on the surface on a 3-milimeter by 3-milimeter diamond sheet. The shape of the golf tees, wide on top and skinny on the bottom, makes the surface of the diamond 98.9% reflective.

In the future, the researchers envision these mirrors being used for defense applications, semiconductor manufacturing, industrial manufacturing, and deep space communications. The approach could also be used in less expensive materials, such as fused silica. [4]

References:

1. https://www.labmanager.com/news/diamond-mirrors-for-high-powered-lasers-2814
2. https://www.tamilbloggers.xyz/diamond-mirrors-for-high-powered-lasers-diamonds-can-withstand-the-heat-from-high-powered-continuous-beam-lasers
3. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-diamond-mirrors-high-powered-lasers.html
4. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220523122546.htm

Cite this article:

Thanusri swetha J (2022), Diamond mirrors for high-powered lasers, Anatechmaz, pp.155